Mark Jenkins: Meaning Is Overrated

Mark Jenkins takes his eye-catching installations from the public realm to an L.A. gallery

Blatantly funny, out of place and eerily real at times, artist Mark Jenkins' installations in the public domain are well deserving of the triple takes they get from passerby. In "Meaning Is Overrated," opening at L.A.'s Carmichael Gallery, we get a dose of his new shenanigans with site-specific works.

Focusing on the human body and practical uses in this new solo show, Jenkins successfully interrupts the everyday with strategically placed installations. His concepts span female forms made of tape and mounted on wheels to a mannequin in a bed stationed at a parking meter in North Carolina to a simulation of a lifelike person who has fallen headfirst into a fountain in Bordeaux.

Also using tape as a medium and opening alongside Jenkins is Aakash Nihalani's "On & Off (Often On)," a display of his angular, colorful masking tape pieces that play on 3-D illusions, along with freshly conceived metal and plastic sculptures. (pictured above and below)